Yea, it is almost certainly more desperation. If you give someone a stable home, food, power, etc - they will find their own thing to do. It is when you owe thousands in debt, have no income, lost your car, are losing your house, etc that you become depressed and desperate enough to self harm.
I mean, you can have people who have huge downs immediately after losing a job, but someone who has just left unemployment compensation would not be considering suicide if they weren't losing everything.
Worse than that: not having money means not having safety nets, getting injured/sick/stressed with no backup, resulting in losing the job/house/car..and down you go.
I'm pretty certain that existential crisis isn't because of who they'd be without their job, except in status obsessed high-income brackets.
For most folks that existential crisis is driven 100% by the realization that they have little in the way of a safety-net, and all it takes is several turns of bad luck to end up in a poverty trap that isn't easy to climb out of. Remember, most Americans make what, 65k or so as a household? And are in massive debt to all of the things they needed to even be able to make that money (college education, car, house, etc).
I am in a broke period of my life right now. One can easily tell me about how much it is all my fault, but I thought I had enough money to last for two years when I quit my job, I thought I could find a job within six months in the bay area, people could argue that I am generous to a fault and people I have lent and given money to in the past can't or won't help me out now.
So it is easy to have some depression when scraping together a few bucks for transit to a job interview becomes one of the harder tasks. It's doubly frustrating when you get on the wrong bus and wind up 45 minutes late to the interview.
Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..
Just as much? Mental health crises are exacerbated by desperate conditions like not having a home. The two are linked and keeping someone with bipolar disorder who has just lost their job from ending up on the street in the first place would head off a lot of cases of individuals going off the deep end in the face of despair and nowhere to go.
Someone with parents working at a factory goes to school, gets a job at a fast food place while in college, dropped out to work more or maybe just couldn't find work afterwards and gets stuck in a cycle. Without money, things like a flat tire become disasters because now you have to choose between going to work and paying the gas bill to keep hot water on.
It sucks living a year without hot water.
Stuff happens. Flat tire could have been lost cash, doctor appointment, anything $20 or more.
The bigger problem is that once you are down, regardless of whether it is your fault or not, it can be quite possible to get to a point that it becomes impossible to pull yourself out without some help. I kid you not, I've had buyers remorse over spending $.50 to avoid getting the store brand that I didn't like. There simply aren't many choices left at that point.
It must be nice to have a life so luxurious you can't stomach working a dead end job for 2 months.
It is interesting to me the different notions of pride people have. I would lose all my pride if I had to take out loans to survive. It seems you would lose your pride if you ever had to take something less than you thought you were worth.
It has been impressed upon me my entire life that self sufficiency is the greatest thing you can achieve.
I am genuinely curious to know (you and the others that are cripplingly depressed when life doesnt go their way) -- Why would you be in a crippling state of depression?
This is eye opening and like a field course in psychology to me.
EDIT
I'm not going to baby anyone. It's pathetic to skate by on loans rather than your own hard work. Grow some balls, stomach your problems, and power through it.
My goal in life is to be the rock of stability that people can cling to when times are difficult. If that means ignoring my fears like they aren't there, then that is what I will do. If that means serving french fries to people that are more rude than you can imagine - saying horrible things about you just because you work at mcdonalds - then that is what I will do.
But please do answer my above question. I learn more with every comment that is made.
EDIT
Same here. When I was unemployed for a while the only thing that made me unhappy was the fear of running out of money. If I had a guaranteed income of some level that allows me to survive I would not need a job to be happy.
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